In the last three months, several European governments, human rights organizations and religious institutions have approached the Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and urged the resumption of the formal talks in the peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP).

By Professor JOSE MARIA SISON NDFP Chief Political Consultant

In the last three months, several European governments, human rights organizations and religious institutions have approached the Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and urged the resumption of the formal talks in the peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP).

On each occasion, the NDFP Negotiating Panel has agreed to the resumption of the formal talks in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration and upon the resolution of certain prejudicial questions and the Arroyo regime’s stopping the nationwide extrajudicial killings and abductions of unarmed legal activists.

The NDFP Negotiating Panel has also reiterated the 10-point proposal of the NDFP for a concise agreement for an immediate just peace, instituting truce while negotiations proceed on social, economic and political reforms in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration.

The NDFP has further proposed that the Arroyo regime immediately stop its military and police forces and death squads from committing extrajudicial killings and abductions and that the independent nominees of the GRP and NDFP in the Joint Monitory Committee created by the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) work with the representatives of the Norwegian government and the International Red Cross Committee to investigate the extrajudicial killings and abductions.

But the Arroyo regime has refused to heed the appeals of the aforesaid European governments, international human rights organizations and religious institutions for the resumption of formal talks in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations because the regime is intent on pursuing its all-out war policy and its costly but futile campaign to destroy the armed revolutionary movement in two years’ time.

GRP officials have also frankly admitted that the Arroyo regime is pursuing an all-out war policy as a matter of political survival in order to rally the fractious rank and file of its military and police forces and to continue receiving military and financial assistance from the US government within the framework of the Bush-directed global war of terror.

Special operations teams or death squads of the Arroyo regime continue to escalate their attacks against progressive party list groups, trade unionists, peasant leaders, women, youth activists, church people, journalists, lawyers and other people who are legally opposing the Arroyo regime. The special operations teams or death squads are composite military and police units of the Military Intelligence Group under the direction of the Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security and the Anti-Terrorism Task Force.